


Across Time and Space

by femmenoire



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 01:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmenoire/pseuds/femmenoire
Summary: Iris misses Barry.





	Across Time and Space

Her world had shrunk.

Her world used to be big and bright and full of laughter and love.

And now it was small and contained. She was still loved. Iris West’s world was always full of love. Joe West wouldn’t have it any other way.

But she could feel it, the difference; her life before Barry and her life after.

It was new and strange because she could barely remember her childhood before Barry. Her story was as bound to him as his was to her.

But that was before he’d stepped into the speed force and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

And so now her life, After Barry, was a strange terrain that she tried to navigate the best she could, while hating every step.

***

There was a routine.

She was still a junior reporter at Central City Picture News and so no one expected her to be in the office all day every day. Her new editor felt strongly that a reporter had to be out in the field, running down leads, and so Iris, smartly, took advantage of that policy.

She showed up to the CCPN newsroom 3-4 times a week for an hour or so at a time. She turned in her stories each week, with a particular meta-human focus, on time if not early. But most of her days were spent at Star Labs running.

Leading.

Barry’s shoes were deceptively big. She had expected the strain of keeping track of everyone’s input, pushback and needs because she remembered those moments when the weight of responsibility had weighed heaviest on Barry’s shoulders.

But she hadn’t expected the pain of the memories. Every room in Star Labs and every time someone wondered where the Flash had gone sliced her like a knife opening up the gaping wound of her and Barry’s past and the future that should have been.

Barry was everywhere, not just Star Labs. He was at home with her dad, even as he cleared away the detritus of his life with Francine to make room for Cecile. He was in the CCPN office and his lab at the police station.

And he haunted every square inch of their home.

This was the worst part of her day. Every day.

***

Iris’ shoulders felt tight with anger, sadness and stress. And the longing.

She dropped her keys in the bowl she and Barry had found at an estate sale two months after they’d moved in together. She’d loved it. Barry thought it was a pottery class reject. Iris agreed, but countered that that was part of its charm.

He’d bought it because it made her happy.

She pulled some leftover Chinese takeout out of the fridge and shoved it into the microwave. She stared out of the window into the inky night sky while her food warmed, too afraid to look at the living room and see Barry’s smiling face staring back at her from her mind’s eye or remember the, what felt life, ancient image of him stooped over their dining table studying, the latest article on quantum physics that was literally written in Greek, sprawled out before him.

Her heart couldn’t take it.

She ate her food in silence, scrolling through her twitter feed for any hint of a meta appearance that Wally and Cisco might need to tackle.

She sighed wistfully at the unusually quiet night in Central City.

Barry’s toothbrush was still resting on the shelf above the bathroom sink next to hers.

She watched it as she washed and dried her face.

Her hand hesitated for a second as she reached out to grab her own toothbrush.

She watched his unmoving electric toothbrush as she scrubbed her teeth, thinking of the little dance Barry did while brushing his teeth and remembering the conversation they had frequently about the fact that, technically, he could brush a manual toothbrush faster than the electronic one.

It was only in his absence that Iris came to understand. Their nightly tooth brushing sessions before bed were normal. They were moments where he could, literally, slow down and enjoy the life he was building with her. They could be domestic, just like everyone else.

For those four minutes a night he was just Barry Allen and she was just Iris West (soon to be, West-Allen, but no longer).

Iris could feel the tears building behind her eyes and wanted to cry. She closed her eyes tight and focused on thoroughly cleaning her teeth.

When she slipped onto the couch, pulling her blanket up to her chin, her eyes were trained on the ceiling. She saw his face even there.

She closed her eyes, hoping for peace. But he followed.

The look was familiar, and her body responded immediately.

***

His touch was always gentle.

Iris sought to mimic the feel of his fingers as they glided over the column of her neck.

Her mind conjured the sound of his voice whispering over her skin. “Iris.” Her name fell from his lips in love and reverence. She imagined. She remembered.

Her nipples tingled and then hardened as she massaged her breasts, his name on the tip of her tongue, but she refused to breath it.

Her legs fell open as she ran her fingertips down her torso.

She remembered their first time.

They were adolescent nervous. She couldn’t stop giggling and he was too afraid to touch her with sweaty palms. His tongue was in her mouth and she suckled on it. She could hear his heart beating and almost pulled back because it was fast, too fast. And then she remembered, as she ran her tongue along his, that he was the Flash.

He moaned into her mouth.

In her memory, and in the present, Iris clenched her thighs together as wetness soaked her underwear.

She felt, now, what he’d felt then. Her fingers glided along her slick folds and she opened her mouth in pleasure and shock, because this was Barry, _her_ Barry, making her pulse quicken and her juices flow.

She strangled the moan in the past and the present.

“Iris,” he groaned against her lips, his erection pressing against her hip.

She added another hand, one to rub soft circles on her clitoris the way he learned she liked and the other to push two fingers inside.

His face flashed behind her eyes as the tears built.

He was always so earnest, so intent on her pleasure. She’d wanted to weep then, but even more now at the memory.

She bit her lips as her orgasm neared and the cavern of his loss seemed to lay at her feet. Her fingers worked over her most sensitive spots as fast as possible, but never as fast as Barry.

Her orgasm was intense, but in different ways.

In the past it was debilitating; her body shaking, her mouth falling open in a pleasured “o”, her legs locked, open to receive him, her center gushing.

In the present her thighs shook, her deep moans filled the room, her hands kept moving.

She came but she wasn’t sated.

Her moans turned into sobs that wracked her body.

Her wet hands trapped between her thighs.

Her pillow wet under her cheek.

His name, finally his name, falling from her mouth again and again in sorrow.

“Barry,” she cried, and fell into a fitful sleep.

***  
It was like everywhere and nowhere; Barry might have thought if he could have slowed down to separate each moment into distinct pieces.

There was Iris when they were ten, smiling at him over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, her two front teeth missing, the most beautiful girl in the world.

There was Iris, frowning at him as he tried to do the running man, her dark blue party dress beautiful against her brown skin. She shook her head even as a smile began to spread across her lips. “Oh, Bear,” she giggled and reached out to him.

There were bad times too. The way he felt watching her go out on dates with boys who weren’t him. The gut punch of watching Eddie’s engagement ring resting on her finger. Watching her mourn Eddie’s death.

But he didn’t dwell. There was no time to dwell on any of it.

Her moans stayed with him though. The feel of her tight wetness wrapped around his fingers, his dick, his tongue. The taste of her. The way she laughed around her orgasm. The way she laughed when he spilled his beer onto his lap while at the Central City Tiger’s baseball game.

Her laughter turned to screams of pain. “I blame you,” she said. He smiled and nodded and focused on not wincing as her fingernails dug into the back of his hand as yet another contraction washed over her.

“I blame you,” she screamed.

“I love you,” he breathed, his lips kissing her cheek. One baby’s crying filling the room, followed quickly by another.

He could see it all.

But he couldn’t hold it.

He couldn’t hold her.

“Iris,” he whispered involuntarily. His lips moving of their own accord.

His heart reaching out to her across all time and space.

\--

 

Soundtrack: Ibeyi, "No Man Is Big Enough for My Arms"; "Valé"; "Ash"


End file.
